In the game of hate no one wins

Our unique communicative capacity and the means we have to preserve knowledge allow us to be aware of many of the emotions and feelings that have influenced our social interactions. Fortunately, most of them are positive, they edify others and confer value and importance to those who allow themselves to be permeated by them. Love is a clear example of this.

This sentiment has not only received enormous attention from human relations studies, but also from the consumer industry. However, what remains of the other side of the coin: hatred? What place does it occupy in the study of human existence?

There is a lot of literature that allows us to understand love: novels, movies, stories, scientific and philosophical investigations, etc. But what about hate? What do we use to understand its psychology?

What is hate?

There are many definitions and conceptions of hate, so There is no exact and fair conceptualization about it. It has been considered in multiple ways: as an emotional attitude, a normative judgment, a feeling, a motivation, a generalized evaluation…

Despite conceptual discrepancies, There is a component that has been accepted in all of them: the desire to harm. This desire can be a means to an end or an end in itself. Thus, people may long to harm another to restore an established order, elevate themselves, obtain pleasure, reaffirm autonomy, or prevent abandonment. In all these cases, regardless of the intention, the objective is to harm.

At the interpersonal level, it has been stated that Hatred fulfills different functions such as: self-repair, revenge, communicating emotional states or reestablishing autonomy. At the intergroup level, hate has been considered as a functional means for political behaviors, such as affiliation and cohesion within the group.

Hate, understood as a short or long-term feeling, is altered and intensified by other emotions, like revenge, anger, contempt. Different factors intervene in the complexity, chronicity and stability of this feeling; especially, motivational.

Thus, hate is influenced by the motivation that intensifies the basic tendencies to action. Roseman (2008) has suggested that these action tendencies are an inherent part of emotional experience and has labeled them “emotional” components of the emotional system.

Although hate is influenced by other emotions, such as anger, dislike, and contempt, it should not be equated with these.. In research, it was found that hate is more arousing than these three moral emotions, and that it is closer to disgust and contempt than to anger and aversion.

What a surprise! Our common sense tells us that it is closer to anger, but research tells us otherwise. As is often the case, our common sense is the least common of all the senses.

Hating poisons the mood, makes us distrustful and sometimes aggressive.

Differences between hate and anger

Hatred and anger can be distinguished from three perspectives: evaluation, action tendencies, and motivational goals.

With respect to evaluations (or evaluations), hate is different from anger, since the object of anger is evaluated as someone whose behavior can be influenced and changed, while, in the case of hatred, this is perceived as stable and unable to change its negative characteristics. Furthermore, these evaluations are directed at the person themselves and not at their actions, as in the case of anger.

In relation to action tendencies and motivational objectives, Hate differs from anger in that it aims to harm, humiliate or destroy (kill) the other., while anger aims to coerce the other. Although you both have certain similarities, your emotional goals are totally different.

Neural correlate

In research, it was found that seeing a hated face increases activity in the medial frontal gyrus, right putamen, premotor cortex, frontal lobe, and medial insula.

The researchers in this study also found three areas in which activation was linearly correlated with the level of hate: the right insula, the right premotor cortex, and the right frontomedial gyrus.

This research shows that There is a unique pattern of activity in the brain when a person feels hate. Although this pattern is different from the one that has been correlated with that of romantic love, both share two areas in common: the putamen and the insula.

Triangular theory of hate

Like the triangular theory of love, Hate also has a triangular structure, according to Sternberg’s theoretical model. The three components of this structure are: intimacy, passion and commitment. In the case of hatred, these three are presented in their negative version.

Privacy

The first component of hate is the denial of intimacy. While in love, intimacy implies emotional closeness, in the case of hate, its denial It implies an active search for emotional distancing, for disengagement.

This distance is due to the fact that the individual or group arouses repulsion or disgust in those who experience hatred. These feelings can remain dormant for years.

Passion

Passion in hate is composed of fear or anger in response to a threat. The emotion of anger leads to an approach to the object of hate to attack or destroy it, while fear leads to its avoidance.

The fight and flight reaction is part of hatred, because the hated person is perceived as a real or imaginary danger, so one must escape from him or eliminate him.

Commitment

This component is characterized by devaluations and attitudes of contempt towards what is hated, whether it is a group or a person. It is very common for the object of hate to be seen as something subhuman.

The goal of those who promote hate is for the group or person to be devalued by others and to be perceived as something worthy of being rejected, destroyed or damaged.

Hate is a social emotion that arises in the face of injustice, contempt or shame.

As in the triangular theory of love, the combination of these three components makes up different types of hate:

Cold: disgust (denial of intimacy). This type of hatred is characterized by feelings of disgust.Hot: anger/fear (passion). It is characterized by feelings of anger or fear. The reaction can be flight or attack.Cold: devaluation/decrease (commitment). This cold hatred is based on thoughts of unworthiness toward the hated group or person.Boiling: disgust (denial of intimacy + passion). It is characterized by feelings of disgust in conjunction with anger or fear towards the object of hatred.To simmer: disgust (denial of intimacy + commitment). This hatred is based on feelings of aversion and thoughts of unworthiness towards the hated person or group. Also feelings of disgust.Seething: insult (passion + commitment). It is characterized by feelings of injury. For the person who has this type of hatred, the other is a threat, he always has been and always will be.Fiery: annihilation (denial of intimacy + passion + commitment). It is characterized by a vehement desire to destroy the other, to annihilate them.

Hate is a feeling that has caused much destruction on our planet, it has not only ended millions of human lives, but also thousands of animal lives. Although these types of feelings have evolved for adaptive purposes, the way we use them will determine not only our survival as individuals, but also our survival as a species.

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